Ghostlands mt-3

by Marc Scott Zicree

  “We haven’t had to use them inside the town…as yet.” Arcott’s eyes glittered with that sharp watchfulness that stripped you bare as a chemical peel, the corners of his lips curled in an insolent smile. “So tell me, just what do you do? Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief?”

  “Correct on the first two,” Doc said. And as for the third, Cal reflected, if they’d brought along Enid Blindman, well, he was half Lakota Sioux, if not a chief, as far as Cal knew.

  “Really?” Arcott sounded impressed. “Professional men. And what brings you to this far-flung outpost of the empire?”

  “How is it you have the power up and running?” Cal asked flatly.

  “Ah, you’ll show me yours if I show you mine.” Arcott chuckled. “Very well, we have no secrets here….”

  Cal caught the uneasiness that bloomed in Theo’s eyes. Bullshit, it screamed in glowing neon letters. Cal saw that Melissa Wade had noticed this, too; uncertainty flickered momentarily in her eyes, then was replaced, with an effort, by neutrality.

  “A question, Mr. Griffin.” Arcott leaned on the small round table, which had barely enough room for the five cups and his elbows. “Why precisely do you think the world came crashing to a halt?”

  “Because all the machines stopped running.”

  “Obvious but, I would posit, dead wrong. It stopped because most everyone assumed the rules had changed, when in actuality all that happened was a new addendum was included.”

  Cal thought of the miles of crushed, scorched aircraft he had seen on his journey alongside Larry Shango, when Shango had been on his odyssey to find Jeri Bilmer and her errant information; of the hundreds, thousands who had plummeted to their deaths when the jet engines had abruptly cut out…and beyond that the uncounted millions who had suffered appalling injury and worse when the hideous power of the Source Wave spread out from its unknown point of origin somewhere in the west and carpeted the whole wide world.

  An addendum…

  “So what are you saying?” Cal demanded. “That something was added rather than taken away?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Arcott responded airily. “The rules that governed the Einsteinian universe are still the same, with just an addition to the cosmology that funnels energy to a fresh purpose. A new physics, some might say, but more accurately the old physics with a twist or two, a new wrinkle. Perfectly explicable, if you merely apply a clarity of observation, some logical thinking. And once you bring that scrutiny to bear”-he waved at the computers, the electric lamps, the espresso machine with its screeching din-“you can introduce a governing principle into the mix that restores balance to the situation.”

  “And this is what you have done?” Doc inquired. “You are, what? A graduate student, like Ms. Wade and Mr. Siegel here?”

  “Until last year, when I got my doctorate, then I was promoted to associate professor. I was hoping to land tenure eventually….” He smiled that Cheshire smile again, glanced around the room at the steady stream of light, the computers, the works. “But since landing the brass ring, they might just give me the town.”

  “And you came up with this all on your lonesome?” Cal asked.

  Arcott betrayed only the slightest hesitation. “Yes, the initial theoretical underpinnings. Fortunately, it was a parallel area of research to studies we’d been doing prior to the Change, examining different strategies utilizing precious and semiprecious stones to contain elusive energies, initially in an attempt to harness fusion.

  “Or putting it more simply,” he added airily, warming to the topic, “we learned there were certain assemblages, specific combinations of gems, that set up a spectral interference, jangled the harmonics of the post-Change sieve effect, withholding the energy from being siphoned away to fuel the hoodoo and beasties and things that go bump in the night, and keeping it where it rightly belonged-in the matrices of the electrical and mechanical devices it had originally been designed to run.”

  Arcott’s eyes were gleaming now, as though he himself were filled with electricity. “Once I got the basic principles down, I built the practical equipment along with Theo and Melissa here. They in turn oversaw a team of undergrads to do the scut work.”

  He gestured at those in the cafe. “We’ve convinced most of the student body-and practically all the town-to hang tight until we get the kinks out. Then we can teach others, restore the U.S. grid. But for the time being, we’ve got to keep to ourselves, for security’s sake. Can’t risk some invading force of yahoos thinking they can take over the whole flea circus.”

  It sounded reasonable…so why, Cal wondered, was it giving him the creepy crawlies?

  “And what about the illusion of plague?” Doc asked. “That is, as you say, quite the new wrinkle.”

  “A little serendipity along the way.” Arcott shrugged. You set out to make a solvent and you discover Nutrasweet.”

  “I would like to study this Nutrasweet of yours a bit more closely,” Doc noted.

  “We’ll see,” Arcott said, and Cal knew his meaning was the same as when parents said it. “Now. I’ve shown you mine…”

  “My sister was kidnapped,” Cal replied. We’re searching for her.”

  Siegel and Wade registered surprise. Arcott’s eyes narrowed. “On your own?”

  “With some friends, who are waiting back at camp for us.”

  “Ah. I won’t ask exactly where that might be, not yet at least. But you could be so good as to tell me what they do.”

  You’re fishing, Cal realized. You need something…or someone. Unbidden, Doc’s words on the roof of the mall came floating up to him.

  You cannot know what you will need at your ultimate moment of truth…nor whom. So given that, it is a good idea to bring as wide a variety of dramatis personae as possible.

  “We have a former naval lieutenant,” Cal said. “An Internet geek, a few laborers…and a physicist.”

  Arcott sat up at that. “What’s his name?”

  “Dahlquist. Rafe Dahlquist.”

  Theo Siegel and Melissa Wade recognized the name and were clearly impressed. But the most dramatic change was in Arcott. There was no insolence now, no mockery.

  “Take me there, I’ll come alone,” he said. “I need to talk to him.”

  TWENTY

  CAT AND ROCK AND BONE

  For hours, the windsong of the grasses was their sole companion as, an invasion force of two, Shango and Mama Diamond soldiered on into the heart of Iowa.

  Then, as dusk drew its cloak across the land, Shango pointed out a black speck in the east, moving across the sky like torn fragments of leather lifted on a storm wind. Black, and distant, and purposeful. Mama Diamond could barely make out the telltale crenellation of the distant wings.

  It was a dragon, though by no means necessarily Ely Stern.

  It dipped below the level of the horizon and could not be seen anymore.

  A sound came rippling though the air to them, like a distant crack of thunder.

  The dragon rose, was visible for just a moment, then dipped down out of sight again. A second, identical sound pierced the night, and Mama Diamond realized it wasn’t thunder but rather something that would have been as out of place and astonishing to a Styracosaurus or Australopithecine in their day, had they the sense to know it.

  It was gunfire.

  When Mama Diamond and Shango reached its point of origin-and it didn’t take all that long at full gallop, having chosen to stow the bike and its payload behind-they didn’t find the gun or the shooter.

  But they did find one hell of a big dead dragon.

  Not Stern, Mama Diamond observed with some disappointment, very clearly not Stern.

  Shango crouched by the huge carcass, lamp held high as he investigated the killing mark smack dab between the creature’s eyes. He studied it until he was certain, and then stood again.

  “A bullet wound,” he said, leaving unspoken the vast panorama of all that might imply.

  Hoofprints led in one direction away, and tire prints anothe
r.

  The path of treadmarks lay along a road that dipped into a valley. Peering down into it in the dying remnant of the light, Shango gasped and his face betrayed that rarest of emotions for him-fear.

  Mama Diamond followed his gaze and was perplexed, seeing nothing that would draw such a response. But then she understood that what she perceived bore no relation to what Shango was seeing.

  And Mama Diamond knew it wasn’t because of what in the old days (the pre-Stern days) had been her rusty old vision, the cataract on her left eye and what she jokingly referred to as her “good” eye on the right, the sight that had remarkably become acute. No, this came up out of the part of her that was her dragon soul, that could tell the difference between false and true.

  Mama Diamond spoke low and calmingly to Shango, reassured him and in due time got him moving forward into the valley, against the evidence of his eyes, his nose and all his other knife-sharp loner instincts.

  Beneath the killer moon, the Rock and Bone Woman and the Cat Who Walked Alone descended into the waiting arms of the town called Atherton.

  Leather Man will have my hide, Inigo thought anxiously as he stood at the crossroads, in what the Great Unwashed, the normals, laughingly thought of as darkness, breathing hard from the running and the fright, standing bent over with his hands on his thighs, trying to catch his breath and decide just exactly what he should do.

  Take the portal on the left and head back to New York City-or fake New York City, at any rate-where Papa Sky and Christina were waiting for him, where he could report mission accomplished and get a gold star and maybe a hot meal or two and not risk a major ass-whipping.

  Or do something really stupid.

  But he knew, he just knew that where he had led Herman Goldman to was one major suckhole of a quicksand pit that old Mr. Hippie Wizard there would absolutely positively not be able to extricate himself from, at least not without some major help from an amigo or two or three.

  And if young Master Inigo Devine, he of the blue-gray skin and pale saucer eyes (which really didn’t look that bad once you got used to them), just slunk on back to the Bogus Apple without flagging anybody as to the whereabouts of Goldie Five Aces, well then, it really wouldn’t matter where Inigo as the representative of the man in black, who was not really a man, led Cal Griffin and his little group-at least, not to Herman Goldman, who wouldn’t be a member of that little group, or any little group for that matter, except maybe the constituency of the dearly departed.

  And yes, Inigo knew that Goldie had squeezed him for info, and perhaps for a fleeting moment had intended to do a great deal more. But Goldman had thought better of it, because, Inigo sensed, that wasn’t Goldman, not really, not the better part of him, just the small, dark fraction that was like most of Leather Man and the totality of the Big Bad Thing, and even a little black corner of Inigo himself. I mean, who didn’t screw up now and then?

  Inigo had to admit, he liked Goldie.

  And he had just left him in a world of shit.

  He swore under his breath, in that lightless corridor a quarter mile beneath the prairie grasses, under the waning moon.

  What would his parents tell him to do, if they weren’t both individually MIA or in the Big Hereafter, if that was indeed where they had gone?

  They’d tell him to get his meandering grunter ass back to the Ghostlands and Bogus Manhattan before he was missed on his little walkabout. Because Leather Man was in the service of the Big Bad Thing, and Inigo was protected so long as he didn’t cross either; he wasn’t significant enough to bother with, at least while he served their need….

  But tonight, he knew, he’d been on a secret mission that very much did not serve the Big Bopper, numero uno, and right now what he was considering doing wouldn’t be serving either Boss Man number one or number two (not that either could reasonably be termed men anymore).

  Which greatly increased his chances of being noticed and squashed by one or the other, or both.

  So he knew Mommy and Daddy in absentia would tell him to be sensible, to get on home.

  But where in the Taco Bell Chihuahua had that ever gotten him?

  Inigo turned away from the portal.

  No gold star tonight…

  It took him a bad long time to reach the surface, get to the lip of the silo where he had last seen Colleen Brooks writhing on the ground, temporarily blinded by the flash balls Goldie had wielded, that had allowed Inigo to slip from her grasp and propel himself into this universe of doo-doo.

  Naturally, she wasn’t there any longer. But even in the depths of night it was ludicrously easy for him to track her heat-radiating, stumbling footprints back to camp. And even if there’d been no prints, he could just as have readily followed her scent.

  Mighty handy to be a little gray guy every now and then.

  He found her in the bowels of the grain silo just as dawn was breaking, making him squint against the light and giving him yet another in a long line of Excedrin headaches (only, of course, there was no Excedrin to be had). Colleen was engaged in an intent powwow with Cal Griffin and that Russian doctor guy. Near them, he noticed, that husky old scientist Dahlquist was hunkered down with a newcomer, and they were holding a Coleman lantern over big unrolled sheaves of paper that looked like blueprints of some kind.

  The newcomer hadn’t changed his attire since Inigo had seen him before, at the train siding, but he’d have recognized him anyway.

  It was Bomber Jacket.

  A new day was just starting, and already it was a ball-breaker.

  TWENTY-ONE

  APOCALYPSE MOUSE

  When he’d been here long ago with his so-called biological parents (thank God that matching pair of advertisements for Flattened Affect were biological, Goldie used to think; it meant they had to sleep every now and then, leaving him blissfully alone for a few hours), the park had been called the happiest place on earth.

  And now, well, it still was…if you happened to be a grunter.

  Those manic little orcs were having the time of their lives, laughing their distended creepy heads off.

  And the best thing, the very best thing, in the dusty old words of that toothless guy at Woodstock, was that now, thanks to the Change, it was “a free concert, man!”

  No admission price, no waiting in line-hell, no lines at all.

  Nobody here but us chickens…

  And Herman Goldman, who, for some reason that seemed considerably less like a good idea around about now, had thought to come here.

  Upon emerging topside and seeing the hyperkinetic little monsters all piled on the flying elephant ride (which, minus electricity, was even more going nowhere than when it had just moved in circles), Goldie backed himself up all the way to Main Street. Which was exactly like the Main Street Sinclair Lewis had described in his book of the same name, if the buildings were three-quarter scale and all the inhabitants were four feet tall with hypodermic teeth and ravenous, maggot-colored eyes.

  At least you’ve still got your sense of humor, Goldie told himself.

  Yeah, and look where that’s gotten you your entire Rube Goldberg life.

  So now what? Beat a hasty retreat, and live to tell the tale?

  He knew the answer to that one.

  Nobody here but us chickens…and Herman Goldman. And one other human, or near-human, somewhere in this rambling, dead faux kingdom. Not the best Inigo had ever seen, but the best he’d heard of.

  The Man with the Knack.

  To take the grunters where they could not go, where tunnels and caverns and mineshafts failed, where burrowing would not suffice. To bridge the gap, make straight the path, take two points and draw a straight line.

  Goldie needed that knack, if he could get it. For Cal, and Tina, and the rest of them.

  But mostly for Magritte, for what had been done to her, for the dead hot core that burned in him now that only blood would quench.

  He had a job to do here.

  And neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of
night…

  Nor even-what had Inigo called them? — little gray guys would stay him from his appointed rounds.

  Crouched in the alcove of what had been a silent-movie theater, he could hear (even with his pitifully weak human ears) the wretches scurrying about outside, could catch their fierce quick breaths, their helium-esque cries of twisted delight. They were everywhere.

  What kind of ticket do you need for the Meet the Wizard ride?

  But then, they’d gotten rid of ticket books years ago.

  The shortest distance between two points is a straight line….

  Herman Goldman walked boldly out of the silent-movie theater (which really was silent now, and dead as vaudeville) and strode up to a bunch of the stooped creatures, who were feinting at each other with knifelike shards torn from the shattered plate-glass window of the Emporium across the way.

  Upon seeing him, they stopped their game and turned with gleaming, malicious eyes. At which point, he spoke the words he’d waited his entire life to say.

  “Take me to your leader.”

  At first, they’d all bared their pointy piranha teeth and, squealing like rabid Pekinese, leapt for him.

  It took mucho fancy footwork and summoning up the granddaddy of all glowing blue fireballs to drive them back and get them to actually listen to Mr. Midnight Snack a moment or two.

  “Cut it out, cut it out!” Goldie cried, swatting them away, his fingers trailing long threads of luminescence. “Jiminy crickets, you guys got about as much impulse control as a junket of Republicans!”

  They settled down to resentful grumbling. Then they took him where he wanted to go.

  Which, as it turned out, next to the pirate ride and the shrinking-inside-a-molecule ride (which was long gone even before the Source put paid to the whole notion of tourism), was his favorite of all.

  The New Orleans mansion had been designed to look derelict and forsaken, so more than most things it looked essentially the same from the outside.